Aim For The Head

Scoring Early and Often

I am the broadcaster for the Pirates' Triple-A club, the Nashville Sounds. We do a promotion where fans are encouraged to write in and "Ask the Sounds".... One question we received we cannot find an answer for.

Q. Has there ever been a game in which both teams scored at least one run in every inning, and when was the last time it happened?

Thanks for the question, Chuck. My resources only go back to 1978, and I can find only one instance where even one team scored in nine different innings of a regular game. On May 5, 1999, the Rockies scored in each of their times at bat while visiting the Cubs.

The following games also had one team score in every inning they came to bat (although they didn't bat nine times):

For both teams combined, the record (since 1978) for a nine-inning contest is 14 half-innings of scoring. Two games have had 15 half-innings of scoring, but one was an 11-inning game, and the other was a 19-inning marathon. I've included the box scores for all five games at the end of this article.

The team that scored in the largest fraction of innings over the course of a season was the 1994 Indians, at 36.07%. No other team since 1978 has topped 35%, and only three have exceeded 34%:

Conversely, the team with the smallest fraction of scoring innings was the 1981 Blue Jays, at just 20.17%, and no other team failed to score in at least 21% of its innings. The list (expanded to show a few non-strike year teams) is below: